I've been working on my storyform, and have realized that my main character is indeed a Change character. The gist of my story is the main character meets a woman, they fall in love, and then he finds she's involved in something very dangerous. His issue is that he doesn't believe he's important or ...

I was reading some analyses of Speed and I have an alternate view of its structure. The analyses state that Speed has a muddled climax because the bus is on a Timelock, but the final showdown between Jack and Payne is an Optionlock after the Timelock is done away with. The goal according to this ana...

From what I understand, though, queries are different from pitches. In a query, you're supposed to give the reader an idea of the complete story, since you're not going to be there to have a dialogue. You're not supposed to hide your twist ending because the reader's going to want to know if it's tr...

Maybe Number Five isn't either MC or IC. It could be that he's just the focus of everyone in the overall story, so the goal would be Obtaining. The things I'm looking at is that Number Five is steadfast for sure, and I don't remember Stephanie changing her resolve either. Newton would seem to be the...

It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I think that Newton is the Change MC. I admit it's weird to have the MC's role minimized through most of the second act, but Stephanie seems more like a sidekick to me.

I was going through old forum posts yesterday (mainly since [sadly] this forum doesn't seem to be very active) and I came across the thread "What happens when stories get smaller?" ( http://forums.screenplay.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=22 ). There is something touched upon in this thread ...

Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit is trying to help her husband, but accidentally draws the suspicion of Eddie Valiant, deflecting him from the trail of the real killer. She deflects Roger by hitting him on the head with a frying pan, Dolores by making her jealous, and Judge Doom by her effo...

Conditioning, according to Dramatica is mental conditioning, not physical. How about this? Mike hides his efforts to dig a tunnel (senses), but the guards are suspicious of him (instinct). What Mike can't hide he cleverly comes up with alternate explanations for (interpretations), which he feeds to ...

I think it would be useful to have a forum in which each thread was analyzing a movie (or other story) with Dramatica. The movie analysis section on the website is great, but for most movies we just have the storyform and not the analysis process that lead to it. With an actual forum, not only would...

The WOPR computer only tries to figure out the launch codes because it's trying to finish the game and no one else is playing (first Matthew Broderick's character, then NORAD, refuses to respond), so that's an optionlock as well. I'm thinking that within optionlocks there are "suboptionlocks&qu...

It's a double-edged sword having definite ideas about your story when you start Dramatica. It helps you start filling in your storyform, but then when the system selects the optimal choices for the bits you have left, you can start asking yourself, "What kind of sense does that make?" when...

2. Ghostbusters ? They give Gozer a "cease and desist" order, they shoot at her, they try to deny the Destructor a form, they shoot at the Marshmallow Man, all in the last act, but the only option that will work is the one thing they should never do under any circumstances. I get the idea ...

I am a viral deflector, like when your main character can't solve the story's problem because of an incredibly funny YouTube video. ;) I am starting to realize how my main character does in fact change. The issue isn't what the impact character is telling the main character to do. It's what the impa...

So, the setup is thus: main character meets impact character, tells main character to "change course," and the main character does early on, or at least tries. However, something is nagging the main character, like maybe his original course was the correct one. In the end, he goes back to ...